The opening symposium of the connecting cities urban media lab served as an introduction to an intensive six days workshop led by artists Ali Momeni & Luciano Pinna, where selected participants produced artworks that explore new forms of urban participation, using existing mobile technologies and custom DIY devices.

The project cultural hARitage in Brussels

The spread and importance of mobile devices, as smartphones, on everyday activities is well known. It is possible to list several features that allows people to navigate and access context-aware information, such as GPS, QR code scanners, augmented reality (AR), just to mention a few.

But the combination of augmented reality and cultural heritage content it is still not clear, from the effectiveness perspective. Some apps are already displaying touristic information using AR, such as Wikitude, Tripwolf, Junaio and others.

With the Wizart CMS Tool, which combines different media files (audio, video, 3d, text, links, etc) elements with Junaio, it is possible to use AR to achieve cultural information, creating a different approach on current AR apps, which could lead for interesting investigations. One possibility, among others, is the use of iconographic elements (combining comics characters, icons and text) that would trigger the information according to the proximity of the user, based on GPS location.

The target content for this project is one of the official World Heritage Sites from UNESCO, placed in Brussels: the "La Grand-Place" (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/857).

This project aims to explore new tools and ways to present historical content for mobile users. The Wizart CMS Tool combined with the “Connecting Cities Urban Media Lab” seems to be an ideal scenario to experiment cultural content using AR, being a perfect opportunity to go beyond, towards something more pragmatic, and where it is possible to empirically validate some of the developed propositions, offering a unique opportunity to analyze the use of AR and Cultural Heritage content.

The available information is divided in several media types, categorized as:
audio, text, video, comics and link (to external content).
The idea was to get historical - and official - information regarding
the Grand-Place, but also to show how the Grand-Place is portrayed
on other media, such as comics and twitter.

Map

The 12 selected media files were placed in 3 different POI (Point of Interest)
spread in the square, positioned next to the content relation
(when possible - as the audios about the Guilds and City Hall, for instance).

The selection of files are:

Audio 1: Introduction about the Grand-Place

Audio 2: More about the Grand-Place and Guilds

Audio 3: The City Hall building

Audio 4: Brasserie Guild

Comics 1: Racing Show vol 47, by Michel Vaillant

Photo 1: Miller's Guild detail

Photo 2: Stonemason's Guild detail

Photo 3: Illustration from 1830

Text 1: Short version text from UNESCO's website: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/857

Text 2: Long version text from UNESCO's website

Twitter Link: Official twitter page using the Grand-Place Brussels as
search criteria https://twitter.com/search?q=Grand-Place%20brussels&src=typd

The original concept was using media icons for this purpose.
Later on, considering that the Belgium is well known by its comics production,
it was tested one of their most famous comics character: Tintin, as showed in
the videos bellow. Bur even considering this project as an academic/artistic
and temporary experiment, it was understood that the use of such copyright
character should be respected. So on the final version another comics-style
character was specially created for this avatar purposes: an comics version of
Charles of Lorraine, the founder of Brussels.

For each medium type, there is an action related from Charles of Lorraine, as illustrated bellow.
On the AR application, was added the label of the file, in order to give an immediate
feedback for the user.

On each avatar was followed the concept of finding the comics character in a
action related to the media (for instance, on telephone for "audio"),
plus an icon of the medium (as mentioned and illustrated before) with a text label
indicating the file purpose. In this way the user can control of what will be triggered,
according to their own choices.

The App

To use the cultural hARitage application, first it is needed to be at the Grand-Place Brussels
with Junaio App
on your mobile devide (iOS
or Android)
and scan the following QR Code:

If you are not at Grand-Place, or even not in Brussels/Belgium, you can have a preview
look on the POIs by scanning the following QR Codes,
with junaio app, from any place on Earth: